Amazon tops list of most favored brands in America

Amazon is now the most favored brand in America, according to a new report.

YouGov’s annual BrandIndex Year in Review ranked the Seattle-based online retailer ahead of all of the other brands in the U.S., according to a survey of more than 2.5 million participants. That means that it has unseated Ford, which had been the reigning leader in YouGov’s survey.

To get to that result, YouGov asked a bunch of participants this question about individual brands: “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?”

Amazon seems particularly well-positioned for that question, given the amazing response to the announcement of its Prime Air drone delivery service. But it’s not that the ranking is undeserved. Amazon Prime topped 20 million members by the end of last year, and the company had its best holiday sales ever.

In addition, the Kindle brand ranked 10th in YouGov’s results, ahead of Samsung, the next-highest ranking tech brand in 11th place, streaming video competitor Netflix in 12th place, and the iPad and iPhone, which took 16th and 17th place respectively. Apple had a slight lead over Google, as the two companies finished in 18th and 19th place on the survey, respectively.

Meanwhile, typically high-flying Target languished near the bottom of the table, after it announced that hackers had stolen 40 million credit and debit card numbers in a massive attack, which has since expanded to include 70 million customers’ personal information.

Blair Hanley Frank is GeekWire's Bay Area Correspondent. He has also worked for Macworld, PCWorld and TechHive. Follow him on Twitter @belril and email him at blair@geekwire.com.

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